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Open Access Publication Trends in India: A Study

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KIIT - Journal of Library and Information Management
Vol. 8, No. 2, July-December 2021: 62-70
DOI : 10.5958/2455-8060.2021.00003.3
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Open Access Publication Trends in India: A Study

Nilaranjan Barik1*
Pradip Kumar Nikhandia2
Narayana Sethy3

Submitted: 28-03-2021; Revised: 15-04-2021; Accepted: 22-05-2021

ABSTRACT

The study discusses the background of open access publications in India and throws light on
various government and organizational initiatives promoting open access publications in the
country. The study retrieved 22,32,811 publications of India indexed in Scopus in which only
2,90,152 (12.00%) publications were published in open access channels. The percentage of open
access publications is found to be very less. All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New
Delhi is identified as top contributing affiliation/ institution with 7799(2.69%) publications, and
University Grants Commission (UGC), New Delhi is the top funder with 6097(2.10%) publications.
The study promises to be extremely useful for researchers who intend to publish their research in
open access channels.

Keywords: Open access, Open access journals, Scopus, India

INTRODUCTION across the world. As a developed country India is

not behind in taking this opportunity, as the
The free access to the information content and other contribution of Indian publications in open access
benefits inherited with Open Access publications journals is quite minimal with 12.00% of
has given it wider acceptability among the authors, publications.
teachers, researchers, and students community
across the disciplines. An open-access journal is BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
freely accessible over the internet and the users
have the right to download, use, and further During the initial days, the open access movement
redistribute it with proper attribution. These was led by only developed countries in the world.
journals are available online to the reader without Later India, including other underdeveloped
financial, legal, or technical barriers. Like countries also took part in the open access
traditional print type journals, these open access movement. The main reasons are subscription based
journals also maintain the peer review process, access to scientific journals. The renowned
editing and formatting, and marketing. Open publishers charged high prices for subscription of
Access movement has brought tremendous journals. Also the management of academic
opportunities for easy access to scholarly content institutions/ organizations cut their budget

1
Assistant Librarian, 2Deputy Librarian, KIIT Deemed to be University, Bhubaneswar-751024, Odisha, India
3
Assistant Librarian, C.V. Raman Global University, Bhubaneswar-752054, Odisha, India
(*Corresponding author) email id: *nilaranjan.barik@kiit.ac.in, 2pradip.nikhandia@kiit.ac.in, 3narayansethy@gmail.com

62 Indianjournals.com
 Open Access Publication Trends in India

towards subscription of high priced journals. free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of
Several open access declarations /statements were access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute,
made during these days. Budapest Open Access transmit and display the work publicly. IFLA (2003)
Initiative Statement (2002); Berlin Declaration on defines open access as movement and a business
Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and model whose goal is to provide free access and re-
Humanities (2003); Bethesda Statement on Open use of scientific knowledge in the form of research
Access (2003); IFLA Statement on Open Access to articles, monographs, data, and related materials.
Scholarly Literature and Research Documentation Association of Research Libraries (2004) states open
(2003); OECD Declaration on Access to Research access as any dissemination model created with
Data from Public Funding (2004); Washington DC no expectation of direct monetary return which
Principles for Free Access to Science (2004); ARIIC makes works available online at no cost to the
Open Access Statement (2005); ERCIM Statement readers.
on Open Access (2006); NKC (National Knowledge
Commission, India) Statements on Open Access Arunachalam (2008) in his study stated the need
(2007); Plan (2018) are keys that influenced India for Open Access mandate by various research
to march ahead of open-access of scholarly organizations in India for their research output and
literature. discussed various front channels of open access
publications that are making good progress. He
REVIEW OF LITERATURE further discussed various issues of open access
publications. Keisham and Sophia Rani (2008) in
Bibliometric studies reveal the true dimension of
their study describe the concept of open access and
growth of literature on a particular subject or of a
highlight some of the open-access journal initiatives
specific journal. Samanta et al. (2021) meticulously
in India. Lone et al. (2008) state that India is
evaluated Journal of Money Laundering Control
continuously contributing to Open Access literature
from 2014 to 2020 and precisely presented its
as some of the premier institutions, particularly in
publication pattern, intellectual structure,
the science and technology area, are providing
bibliographic coupling, co-citations and assorted
Open Access to their research publications.
facets. Barik et al. (2020) revealed the publication
National Knowledge Commission (2009) reports
trends of KIIT Journal of Library and Information
that all research articles by Indian authors receiving
Management. There have been many single journal
substantial government or public funding must be
bibliometric studies however; studies on open
made available under open access and should be
access journals are found less.
archived in the standard OA format at least on
The Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002) states his/her website. Sawant (2009) states about open
open-access means free availability of articles on access journal initiatives in India concerning its
the web, that permits the users to read, download, type, funding agency/host organization, and
copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full identify 178 open access journals that are peer-
texts of these articles. Berlin Declaration (2003) reviewed, indexed and abstracted in various
states open access as the institutions to encourage indexing databases. Chakravarty and Mahajan
their researchers to publish their research articles (2011) state that the advent of open access has
in open access journals where a suitable journal stripped the crisis of scholarly communication.
exists (and provide the support to enable that to Numbers of open access journal initiatives are
happen). Bethesda Statement on Open Access being undertaken by various academic institutions
Publishing (2003) defines open access that the in India. Roy et al. (2012) focus on the Open Access
author and copyright holder grants to all users a initiatives and describe some of the current open

KIIT - Journal of Library and Information Management 63

 Nilaranjan Barik et al.

access channels and the areas where India has made  Database- Scopus has been selected as source
significant progress. Shah et al. (2016) state that OA database to retrieve the required data for the
journals play a key role in making scholarly material present study,
immediately available on the internet. Barik and
 Period- The period of study of the open access
Jena (2019) state that about 83 countries and 990
publications published from India are from the
institutions across the world are using open access
date of inception i.e. 1849 to 2020, and
journals.
 Geography- The study restricts its geographical
Eventually, the open-access publications are boundaries to India only.
gaining its popularity day by day and most leading
publishers like Elsevier, Proquest, Taylor and METHODOLOGY
Francis, Springer, Emerald, and others have
introduced open access journals in a big way and Scopus database was used to retrieve the related
their acceptance among authors for publishing data to assess the yearly growth of open access
articles has also increased enormously. This publications, prominent funders for promotion of
changing scenario of publishing models, including open access of publications, and key areas of open
the rise of open access journals, has reshaped the access of publications. The required data were
ways of scholarly communication. retrieved from Scopus using the search query
(AFFILCOUNTRY (India)) and again limited to
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY (ACCESS TYPE (Open Access). The retrieved data
were organized in an excel sheet and analyzed
The main objectives behind the study are to;
using statistical tools like average, and percentage
 Know the open access journals initiatives to portray the open access of publications in India.
working in India for the encouragement of
OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS INITIATIVE IN
open access publications,
INDIA
 Identify the prominent funders who promote
open access to publications in India, Indian Science Congress

 Exhibit the growth of publications emanated The early efforts of India to make the publications
from open access journals, and open are by the creation of an Institutional
Repository or self-archiving by the authors. Indian
 Recognize the major areas in which Indian
Science Congress in its 93rd session in 2006 firstly
authors have contributing their research in
raised concern about open access to research. The
open access channels
session reported that India should have a national
SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS policy on Open Access and the national policy
should mandate for open publication of all research
The present study restricts its scope and limitations produced either by partial or full government
to; funding.

 Subject matter- The study recognizes the Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS)
growth of open access publications, the
government and private initiatives working for The Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS) was set of
promotion of open access of publications, the in the year 1934 by the Government of India. It is
funder organizations, and the major areas of a scientific organization that works for the
open access publications only, development of scientific research in the country.

64 Vol. 8, No. 2, July - December 2021

 Open Access Publication Trends in India

Since the year 2007, all 11 journals published by (NKRC) is a network of libraries and information
this organization are available on the open access centers of 43 CSIR and 26 DST institutes. It was
platform. The back volume articles have been established in 2009. NKRC facilitates access to
digitized through a government-supported project. 5,000+ e-journals of all major publishers, patents,
standards, citation, and bibliographic databases.
National Institute of Science Communication and
Information Resources (NISCAIR) The Indian Council of Agricultural Research
(ICAR)
National Institute of Science Communication and
Information Resources (NISCAIR) came into The Indian Council of Agricultural Research had
existence on 30 September 2002 with the merger adopted an Open Access policy for its publications
of the National Institute of Science Communication on 13 September 2013 and announced that each
(NASSCOM) and Indian National Scientific ICAR institute would set-up an open access
Documentation Centre (INSDOC). Broadly the core institutional repository. Since March 2010, the ICAR
activity of NISCAIR is to collect/store, publish and is making available its flagship journals under Open
disseminate S&T information through a mix of Access and by end of December 2018, about 35
traditional and modern means, which will benefit journals are published in the open-access model.
different segments of society. There are 17 journals
being published online by NISCAIR on the open Open Science Publications (OSP)
access platform.
Open Science Publications is a Hyderabad based
Indian MEDLARS Centre open rostrum for publication of peer-reviewed
scientific literature. It has recently assembled 10
MEDIND@NIC is an open-access project initiated open access journals that provide full-length articles
by the National Informatics Centre that provides both in HTML and PDF formats. As Open Science
open access to the full-text content of 38 Indian Publications does not receive funding from any
biomedical journals. This aims at providing online institution and government agencies, the journals
access to full-text Indian biomedical periodicals to published by OSP receive Article Processing
the users within and outside India. Charges (APC) from authors.

Indian National Science Academy (INSA) Medknow Publications Private Limited

The Indian National Science Academy (INSA) was Medknow Publications Private Limited was
set up in the year 1935 by the Government of India. established in the year 1997. Since its inception the
INSA publishes peer-reviewed journals, organizes publisher has been publishing high-quality peer-
scientific discussions, and brings out proceedings reviewed scholarly open access journals in India.
and monographs. The E-journals@insa is a project The publisher contains more than 315 journals and
of the Indian National Science Academy that was exclusively 78 peer-reviewed scholarly journals in
started in July 2002 to facilitate the conversion of the areas of the biomedical subject.
INSA journals from print to digital format and host
these materials online. All INSA journals are open IndianJournals.com
access and full-text is available as PDF files from
IndianJournals.com is a multidisciplinary journal
the common journal gateway.
publisher that contains more than 30 journals that
National Knowledge Resource Consortium provide open content to the users. These open
access scholarly journals mainly belong to the areas
The National Knowledge Resource Consortium of science, technology, and medicine.

KIIT - Journal of Library and Information Management 65

 Nilaranjan Barik et al.

Kamla-Raj Enterprise Where

Kamla-Raj Enterprises which was established in the R= Yearly Research Growth in %

year 1933 is a Delhi based publisher. The publisher
Pp= Publication Present
publishes 21 peer-reviewed open access journals
mainly in the areas of social sciences. These journals Po = Publication Original
are OAI-compliant.
N = Interval between Pp and Po
INDIA’S CONTRIBUTION TO OPEN ACCESS
JOURNALS The authors, institutions, and publishers should be
careful enough for publication of research in open
Yearly Growth of Open Access Publications in channels. The yearly cumulative growth of open
India access publications in India shows an evident
growth trend. It’s a positive sign for a developing
There are a total of 2,90,152 publications of India
country like India. Figure 1 shows the Cumulative
are retrieved from the Scopus database, those are
Growth of Open Access of Publications in India.
published in open access channels. In the year 2019
the highest 21.45% of publications are published Subject wise distribution of Open Access
in open access channels followed by the year 2016 Publications
with 19.31% publications. The yearly growth of
publications is evident only from the year 2011. Medical Science, Engineering, Biochemistry,
Table 1 shows the yearly distribution and growth Physical Sciences, and Computer Science are the
of open access publications indexed in Scopus. major subject areas wherein maximum numbers of
open access publications have been come up by
To calculate the yearly growth of open access Indian authors. Medicine has the highest 43.32%
publications of India, the method applied was; publications followed by Engineering (22.01%),
and Biochemistry (16.88%) of open access
Pp1/n -1
publications. Figure 2 shows the subject-wise
R= x 100
distribution of open access publications in Scopus.
Po

Table 1: Yearly growth of Indian open access publications in Scopus

Year Total publication Open access publications Percentage of yearly Yearly growth of
of India of India open access open access
(n=22,32,811) (n=2,90,152) publications publications
1849-2010 891239 55589 6.24 -
2011 98466 11989 12.18 -
2012 109190 14841 13.59 11.26
2013 117480 17235 14.67 12.86
2014 133338 21460 16.09 15.66
2015 142985 25381 17.75 16.18
2016 154923 29909 19.31 16.45
2017 156496 29325 18.74 13.63
2018 179586 32907 18.32 13.45
2019 189196 40586 21.45 14.51
2020 59912 10930 18.24 -0.92

66 Vol. 8, No. 2, July - December 2021

 Open Access Publication Trends in India

Figure 1: Cumulative
Growth of Open Access of
Publications in India

Figure 2: Subject-wise
distribution of Open
Access of Publications in
India

Out of 22,32,811 publications retrieved from Scopus Publication in

2,90,152(12.00%) are published in open access Open Access
Channels
channels. The ratio of publication does not show 12%
an excellent percentage. Indian publishers, research
institutes should think about it strategically. Figure
3 shows the percentage of total publications v/s
open access to publications in India

Prominent Institute/ Organization contributing

Open Access Publications in India

Table 2 shows the prominent institutes/

organizations contributing open access journals in Total Publications
88%
India. About 134 Indian institutes/ organizations
are identified which are contributing research in Figure 3: Total Publications v/s Open Access of
open access journals. All India Institute of Medical Publications in India

KIIT - Journal of Library and Information Management 67

 Nilaranjan Barik et al.

Table 2: Prominent Institute/ Organization contributing Open Access Publications in India

Rank Name of the Institute / organization No. of Publications Percentage
(n=290152) (%)
1 All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi 7799 2.69
2 Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru 6144 2.12
3 Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education & Research, Chandigarh 5202 1.79
4 Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai 4987 1.72
5 University of Delhi 4855 1.67
6 Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore 3580 1.23
7 Manipal Academy of Higher Education 3490 1.20
8 Indian Institute of Technology, Madras 3348 1.15
9 Panjab University 3307 1.14
10 Banaras Hindu University 3170 1.09
11 Bhabha Atomic Research Centre 3155 1.09
12 Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay 3124 1.08
13 Aligarh Muslim University 2874 0.99
14 Christian Medical College, Vellore 2554 0.88
15 Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur 2543 0.88
16 Council of Scientific and Industrial Research India 2539 0.88
17 Anna University 2458 0.85
18 Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi 2412 0.83
19 Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur 2030 0.70
20 Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow 2013 0.69

Science, New Delhi happens to be the top institute/ publications and Department of Science and
organization for publishing research in open access Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology,
platform. All India Institute of Medical Sciences, India with 3869(1.33%) publications. As a
New Delhi has contributed 7799(2.69%) developing country, India needs more and more
publications followed by Indian Institute of research funders within the country for growth
Sciences, Bengaluru with 6144(2.12%), and the and development of research in open access
institute is followed by Post Graduate Institute of channels. Table 3 shows the list of open access
Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh with research funders in India.
5202(1.79%) publications in open access channels.
FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION
Prominent Institute/ Organization funding for
Open Access of Publications in India There are so many open-access journal initiatives
that have been taken up in India like the Indian
The study identified about 160 Indian funders who Science Congress, Indian Academy of Science,
provided a grant for promotion and publication National Institute of Science Communication and
of research in open access channels. University Information Resources, Indian MEDLARS Centre,
Grants Commission, New Delhi holds the top rank Indian National Science Academy, etc. About
with 6097(2.10%) publications followed by 12.00% of whole publications of India are emanated
Department of Science and Technology, from open access channels. The yearly cumulative
Government of Kerala with 4677(1.61%) growth of Indian open access publications is

68 Vol. 8, No. 2, July - December 2021

 Open Access Publication Trends in India

Table 3: Prominent Institute/ Organization funding for Open Access of Publications in India
Rank Name of the Research Funder No. of Publications Percentage
(n=290152) (%)
1 University Grants Commission, New Delhi 6097 2.10
2 Department of Science and Technology, Government of Kerala 4677 1.61
3 Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology, India 3869 1.33
4 Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India 3293 1.13
5 Department of Biotechnology, Government of West Bengal 3069 1.06
6 Indian Council of Medical Research 2487 0.86
7 Science and Engineering Research Board 2357 0.81
8 National Science Foundation, India 2347 0.81
9 National Institutes of Health & Family Welfare 2317 0.80
10 Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India 1032 0.36
11 Indian Council of Agricultural Research 1004 0.35
12 Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, India 975 0.34
13 Ministry of Human Research Development 713 0.25
14 Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning 537 0.19
15 General Secretariat for Research and Technology 521 0.18
16 Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology 499 0.17
17 The Welcome Trust DBT India Alliance 492 0.17
18 Ministry of Science and Technology 470 0.16
19 Department of Science and Technology, Government of West Bengal 457 0.16
20 National Science and Technology Development Agency, India 441 0.15

evident. All India Institute of Medical Sciences gained enormous momentum in recent years. Open
(AIIMS), New Delhi is identified as top Access has been introduced in India for the last
contributing affiliation/ institution with 7799 two decades. India’s contribution to open access
(2.69%) publications, and University Grants literature shows a growing trend however there
Commission (UGC), New Delhi is the top funder is a need for publication of more and more numbers
with 6097(2.10%) publications. Medical Science, of qualitative open access journals to give a platform
Engineering, Biochemistry, Physical Sciences, and for future researchers. Open-access of scholarly
Computer Science are the major subject areas literature can be achieved in high scale where policy
wherein maximum numbers of open access frameworks, institutional frameworks, information
publications have been come up by Indian authors. infrastructure, trained manpower, and financial
About 134 Indian institutes organizations are resources are adequately available. India as a
identified which are contributing research in open developing country should mandate policies and
access journals and about 160 Indian funders have regulations for open access to publications.
been identified who provide grants for promotion
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